Another option could be to have a do_action in your widget constructor, to which you pass the widget instance. That would then allow you to register a callback for the action where you could inject the parameters into the object. But that would be even messier than Tien's solution IMO.

]]>Zalando Gutschein on "Allow ability to pass parameters when registering widgets"https://wordpress.org/ideas/topic/allow-ability-to-pass-parameters-when-registering-widgets#post-22466
Mon, 16 Jul 2012 20:23:00 +0000Zalando Gutschein22466@https://wordpress.org/ideas/Hello Timothy,
first of all, excuse me for my bad english, i'm from Germany. I have to say that you problem is not too rare. But have you checked your code at this point?:
Class Extend_WP_Widget_Factory extends WP_Widget_Factory {

In the most cases the fault could be found here.

I hope you can solve your problem!
with best regards,
Jens Zalando

]]>Wonder on "Allow ability to pass parameters when registering widgets"https://wordpress.org/ideas/topic/allow-ability-to-pass-parameters-when-registering-widgets#post-22458
Thu, 12 Jul 2012 20:22:38 +0000Wonder22458@https://wordpress.org/ideas/I do not think this is strictly required, I think wordpress developers will overlook.
]]>Dieta Dukana on "Allow ability to pass parameters when registering widgets"https://wordpress.org/ideas/topic/allow-ability-to-pass-parameters-when-registering-widgets#post-22425
Sun, 08 Jul 2012 08:04:15 +0000Dieta Dukana22425@https://wordpress.org/ideas/I don't think many people have ran into the same problem as you Timothy, but I think that this is a good idea and would make wordpress better.
]]>Timothy Wood on "Allow ability to pass parameters when registering widgets"https://wordpress.org/ideas/topic/allow-ability-to-pass-parameters-when-registering-widgets#post-21853
Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:10:01 +0000Timothy Wood21853@https://wordpress.org/ideas/I have run into an issue several times when calling register_widget( 'MyNewWidget' ); for a shared widget class it instantiates the widget over any previously called register_widget() calls to the same class. My proposal is to implement a change of the WP_Widget_Factory::register method to allow passing parameters thus allowing unique constructor calls when registering. My proposed change can be seen as an extension of the WP_Widget_Factory now: https://gist.github.com/2437027
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